12 of the most disastrous second albums of all time – Stone Roses, Duffy and more

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Aaah the tricky second album syndrome, it catches a lot of bands on the hop doesn’t it? After all you have a decade or so to piece together the tunes for your first album, while the second is often flung together in a heartbeat after months of touring.

If you are smart you have saved a few great songs from your early days to tide you over. If not then you better hope that the substance induced writers block disappears and fast.

The tricky part is deciding do you simply try and replicate that first album and risk accusations that you haven’t moved on? Or take the band in a different direction and then risk alienating the fans who loved your early stuff. Either route is fraught with danger.

Here then are twelve apocryphal tales of bands whose second albums were in one way or another disastrous. Some of them, in fact many of them, are actually pretty good, but, poor reviews, a lack of hit singles and a general falling from fashion meant that they stalled, and in some instances killed, a band’s career.

So have a look through the list and tell me which ones I have missed in the comments.

9 The Klaxons - Surfing The Void

This is another second album that improves with age. It might have garnered awful reviews, but I guess many of those critics were just upset in the way the band jettisoned that edgy London nu rave sound for something that is a bit more serious and transatlantic. The opener, Echoes is a fine tune, the title track, wonderfully chaotic, but just so different from that debut.

No list of disastrous second albums is complete without weezer’s Pinkerton. An album so badly received the band split up for four years. Turns out it got better with age, but that really should be top 3 on this list.

Derek

:O what is wrong with you? Room On Fire was amazing!!! i loved Is This It, but Room On Fire was just….better! admittedly 12:51 was one of the weaker songs on there, but it seem like you’re focusing on just that. Plus, Room On Fire has more influences from Is This It than any of the other two seeing as how they basically sound alike.

Brandish

I really like Room On Fire, but in the UK at least, they went from being the coolest band on the planet to also-rans overnight, so that is why it is so high on the list